Although we don’t like to admit it, we all occasionally run into dead end places in our lives where we don’t know what to say, what to do, where to turn, or even how to pray.  Sometimes it seems like we’ve hit a dead end.  In other words, it seems like everything is finished, over, and done with!  If you’ve ever been in a place like this, you know what a hard place this can be!

I remember coming to a dead end when we were in the midst of one of our building programs.   What the building inspector was demanding was going to cost us about a $100,000 more than we budgeted to spend.  Sometimes when you come to a dead end, it seems like you can’t go forward but turning around is not an option either.  One of the worst things that we can do in a dead end situation is to become a bone on your own and try to figure your own way out.  I chose to reveal it to congregation and encouraged them to pray for a breakthrough in the situation.  The end results was that God made a way out of no way. The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons.  If He did that for me He will do it for you.  God has a purpose for dead ends in our lives.  It doesn’t always mean the end but it sometimes marks the beginning of a new season if we will persevere and not take defeat as an option.

Through these kinds of experiences, you and I discover that in our own strength, we are no match for some of life’s problems.  That’s why we must learn to depend on the power and wisdom of God! The apostle Paul tell us that he, too, went through this kind of learning experience when he found himself face-to-face with life-threatening situations in his own ministry.  In 2 Corinthians 1:9, he says, “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”  Paul was definitely at one of those dead end places that we’re talking about. In fact, the situation he faces was so bad that he compared it to a sentence of death. 

But in spite of how it looked, Paul didn’t die, nor did he fail at fulfilling the job God had given him.  It may have looked like it was the end of the road, but it was really the beginning of a new supernatural flow of divine power into Paul’s life.  That’s why he went on to say that through it all, he learned not to trust in himself, but in God who raises the dead.

When you don’t know what else to do and when you have no one else to turn to, that’s usually when God’s resurrection power begins to operate in you to the greatest measure!  You see, there’s no such thing as no hope.  If you learn to rely on him, that dead end place in your life that you’re facing right now can become a new beginning!  

Pain is something that nobody likes, but I find that it is one of those so called "necessary evils" in our lives.  There are basically two types of pain that we suffer through:  physical and emotional.   I want to deal with physical pain in this blog.

Pain in and of itself is one of life's greatest teachers.  When there is physical pain, it is usually an indication that something has gone wrong somewhere in the body.  What a lot of us do is to try to ignore the pain, but when we do that it can lead to something far worse.  Many people have died because of that very reason.  Some of the most dreadful diseases are those that a person has and doesn't have any symptoms to let them know that something is wrong.  By the time they find out it is too late for them to do anything about it.   My daddy died from a battle with prostate cancer, but there was no pain in the initial state.  He was thinking that he was healthy until he finally got checked and it was too late.  I watched this strong man waste away quickly and die. 

So, I am convinced that God created pain as a mechanism for our protection.  For example, if you didn't have any way of feeling pain in your hand and you place that that hand on a hot stove, you would let that hand sit there until it burned severely or somebody else rescued you.   The effects of the burn could take you out of here.  The pain receptors protect you from doing harm to yourself. 

If you look at the ministry of Jesus, for the most part, those that he set free were people who were plagued with physical pain such as:  the woman with the issue of blood, the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, the young boy that was possessed with demons who would through him in the fire, and Lazarus whose pain was so bad that it took his life.  Jesus came to set the captive free!  We have to believe that he is the Great Physician, Jehovah Rapha, the God that heals us. 

Had they not had great pain many of them would not have tried to reach out to Jesus for help.  The pain caused them to come and know Jesus.  If you are in physical pain today, perhaps you can use that pain as a motivating force to reach out to Jesus for help.

We will talk about the mother of all pain; the one that is most difficult to deal with next time. 
 

Giving up is an easy thing to do when you're under pressure.  In fact, for many of us, we become convinced that it is God; convinced that it was the will of the Lord for us to give up and quit, especially after we have fought for a while.  There are some immediate benefits that we gain by giving up:  We get rid of the pressure; We don't have to deal with the test anymore;   It feels like God has given us relief from our pain; It's just outright easier; There is a short-lived peace that you quickly obtain;  You are free to put your energy into something that seems like it's better; and It gives the impression of moving forward.  

However, we all need to understand that nothing happens to us unless God allows it.  Scripture says. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).   Note that in scripture, escaping the temptation is not quitting (unless you're practicing sin), but it is bearing up under a burden.  Why? Because this is one of the many ways that God has chosen to strengthen our faith.  There are two ways to come out of a trial.  The first one is to give up.  The second one is to bear up. Both routes out end in the word up, and they both will seem like they are taken you in an upward motion.  The truth is that one is deceptive; it's a lie and won't lead you up and out...it could just take you out.

It has been my experience that when I have chosen the first way out that I usually find myself right back in the midst of the same set of circumstances a little later on.  But when God brings me out,  it means that I have learned the lesson of faith that the Holy Spirit was teaching me and my faith is ready to move UP to the next level.  Consider what I have said and may the Lord give you wisdom.

I'm learning more and more each day that God, through wisdom, has committed himself to deal with mankind, His children, through a process.  One of the definitions of a process is "a systematic series of actions directed to some end".  It is vital that we understand that because when we don't we are more likely to quit before the end of the process. 

God will cause a series of systematic events to happen in your life to bring you to an expected end.  You may not understand the process; you may not agree with the process; but one thing is certain, you cannot change the process.  In creation, we see God going through a process to bring the earth to a place of habitation.  I am confident that God could have spoken a word and the earth would have become habitable, but He went through a process that lasted 6 days to bring it to that point.  We see this process throughout the Bible.  We see it in the calling of Abraham.  God took him through a process that lasted at least 25 years before the promised seed was given to him.  Even his son Isaac went through a process when his wife was barren prior to seeing the birth of his sons.  Jacob too had to go through a process before he became Israel.  Joseph was taken through at least a 13 year process to prepare him for the throne of Egypt.  The nation of Israel was taken through a process to prepare them for Canaan. 

The Bible is very clear that before you reach your destiny you have got to go through the process.  It is in the process that you will change and become more like God.  If you arrive at your destination without going through God's process for YOUR life, you will not be able to fully inherit what He has in store for you.  The process will cause you to grow up.  Without going through the process, you will neither be mature enough nor have the proper attitude to hold onto what God has given you.  I don't know about you, but I want all that God has in store for me.  Hold on during the hardships that may happen while you go through the process and be a good soldier.  Stay in the fight; keep on the path that God has laid out for you.  Even Dorothy, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion had to follow the yellow brick road to get to their destination.  There were a lot of pitfalls on that yellow brick road.  The witch was waiting for them on the road.  There were a lot of pitfalls that their enemy set for them on their initially joyous journey.  It got worse for them as they got closer to their destination.  You will have to overcome many obstacles as you go through the process, but you will make it if you stay on the road.

In December of 1941, President Roosevelt stood before the U.S. Congress one day after the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he called it a day that will live in infamy.  The President declared that, in reality, America was already at war.  His purpose for going before Congress was that he needed a declaration of war to make it official.

I am certainly not the President of this nation, or any other nation, but I do have a declaration to make.  You and I are at war.  In fact, we are engaged right now in the Mother of All Battles.  This is a war which cannot be compared with any other war in history.  This war can be either the cause of your greatest joy as a Christian, or your deepest sorrow.  The war that I am talking about is the spiritual law that you became a part of the day you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. 

Years ago, when I was in the military, one of the things that they taught us in basic training was the essence of digging and staying in a foxhole when you were under attack.  In this war, there are no bunkers or foxholes that you can crawl into that will shield you from the effects of the battle between the forces of God and the forces of evil.  It is impossible for you to avoid this conflict. 

One of the saddest parts of this battle is that most Christians don't know that they are at war.  Others can see the results of the battle of their lives because they have become casualties of spiritual warfare.  Some are discouraged, depressed, downtrodden, and defeated; others are marital family casualties.  Divorce, conflict, and abuse are some of the battle scars these believers bare.  Still others have been morally wounded in the battle.  They cannot control their passions, or they make poor moral choices.  For some Christians, the wounds have been inflicted in their finances.  It's not just a matter of how they use their credit cards, they are losing the financial battle because they are losing the spiritual battle and they cannot see the connection between the two.  It is sad.  As a pastor, I have preached this over and over again.  I see people losing the battle in the physical realm because they have lost the battle in the spiritual realm.  They are clueless.  The list goes on and on, but I think that you get the idea.

We are all at war, and since there is so much at stake both here in the present and in our future, we better find out what spiritual warfare is all about and how to fight the good fight of faith successfully.  That is what I want to help you to do in some of the blogs that are to follow. 

I had the opportunity last week to travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico with a group from our church. It was an amazing trip. If you ever get the opportunity to visit San Juan, I highly recommend that you visit El Yunque rainforest. The scenery is great and the nature trails are wonderful. If you do go, walk one of the nature trails. We wanted to walk on one of the most visited trails in the rainforest (Arboles Grandes/Big Tree), but we had no idea what we were in for.

Being from the east coast, when we think about nature trails, we think of flat land. When we began this trail, it wasn't long before we began to realize that this was more than what we had bargained for. It started out pretty easy, then a steep incline, then winding and twisting, and going up and down hills. As it continued to go up and down, we soon realized that we were in for a serious, physical challenge. If we were going to see the waterfall at the end of the trail, it was going to take a struggle to get there.

One individual that was with us soon began to feel faint and quickly wanted to drop out. The rest of us that were in my small group told this person that if you started you are going to have to press your way through. About every ten minutes or so, they would stop to catch their breath, and we had to keep pushing them. Along the way they forgot about appearances. There was no room for anything cute; it was about survival. Not wanting to be left behind, they kept pressing on the hillside. It seemed like that about every five minutes we would meet people coming back who would tell us that you have only about five more minutes to go. That was encouraging ...until we would run into someone else about five minutes later and they would say the same thing: "You've only got five more minutes."

Later, we were pretty close to being there, or at least we thought we were. We heard the sound of running water. We thought that we were close to the falls, but we soon discovered that it was just a stream running down the side of the mountain. It was not the final destination. In the meanwhile, another group came by saying it was just around the bend. I didn't know. Once again, I didn't know how far around the bend was. It still took us another ten minutes to go just around the bend. After about seven or eight minutes, we started to hear the voices of children, the sounds of laughter and talking, and the sound of running water once more. We pushed ourselves on and made it to the destination. To me, it was worth all of the toil that it took to get there. People were cooling themselves off in the water. It was a sight to see. I really didn't want to get in the water, but I took a few pictures to prove that I came, I saw, and I conquered, or at least I thought I had. What I had forgotten was that the trip back was going to be as challenging as the trip there.
 
We started the long arduous journey back. This time, we were not rested up like we were when we first started our trek. There was another sister that we ran into on our way back. She was one of our own group members. We could see the tiredness in her and she looked weary, but she didn't want to give up because she didn't want to be by herself. She was heading toward the falls while we were heading back. The person that was with me really got weary going back. As they wanted to quit, it took all that we could do to keep encouraging this person to keep pressing on. She really wanted to quit. "Hang in there, keep pressing your way", we would say. Going back was just as challenging as going down, maybe even more challenging. But...they did not quit and they eventually finished even though they had to stop several times along the way. The journey for the other member of our group didn't end in quite the same way.